AI Giants Sued for Colluding to Slow Development

A proposed nationwide class-action lawsuit was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California against Anthropic, OpenAI, Google, and SpaceXAI. The plaintiffs, representing paid subscribers of ChatGPT, Claude, Grok, and Gemini, allege the companies violated the Sherman Act by entering into an illegal agreement to slow the pace of artificial intelligence development, thereby reducing the value of consumer subscriptions.

The lawsuit centers on a September 12, 2026, essay by Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, who urged industry-wide cooperation to pace the frontier of AI for safety reasons. This proposal received public support from Sam Altman, Elon Musk, and Demis Hassabis. While the companies frame this coordination as a necessary safety measure—citing instances of AI agents breaching production systems—plaintiffs argue the firms used collective restraint to bypass legislative scrutiny and avoid individual corporate accountability.

Internal disagreements over the legal framework emerged as Amodei suggested the U.S. government should mediate these discussions or provide an antitrust waiver. In contrast, Sam Altman stated that OpenAI did not believe it needed to wait for such an exemption to begin safety work.

President Donald Trump has rejected these calls for regulation, characterizing safety fears as a hoax and a conspiracy that would benefit Chinese competitors. He announced plans to appoint an AI czar and form an AI Force to ensure industry growth remains unhindered.